Last Guest
by RowanDarkstar
Summary: "She watches Regina. Because that is what Emma does. She watches people, tries to understand them, tries to predict their next moves. This is how she finds the lost, the forgotten."


**DISCLAIMER:** "Once Upon a Time" and all its wonderful characters belong to ABC and Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis, etc.. I borrow them only with love.

**TIMELINE:** This story takes place not long before "An Apple Red As Blood", at the point at which Emma has begun to toy with the idea that making her peace with Regina and leaving town might be the best thing for Henry in the end.

**"Last Guest"  
**by  
Rowan Darkstar  
Copyright (c) 2012**  
**

Emma arrives late to the party. She has felt late to the party from the day she blew out a candle and Henry appeared at her door.

Strange to be attending a celebration at the home of her rival, strolling up the pathway toward the imposing columns of a brick and mortar palace that has opened and twisted her heart in equal measure. Emma tries to imagine this place as a welcoming home. Apparently this evening is normal in Storybrooke, apparently Regina Mills hosts a get together every year, a week before the end of school. She holds a bit of an arts and crafts fair on the lawn in the afternoon, to raise money for the school's art and music programs. The children give a concert at the school in the evening. The adults return to Regina's for a party when the sun goes down.

Emma joins the revelers when the crowd has thinned. Familiar figures mingle and linger in the mayor's first floor halls, on the front porch, in the foyer.

Regina moves through the crowd, a slender glimmer of silver. This is new to Emma. Regina...in silk.

"Miss Swan. Glad to see you could join us," Regina says, voice lilting, lips twisting into a brief smile as Emma crosses the threshold. The mayor balances a drink in her hand, crystal glass catching the light from the chandelier. Like her dress, like her earrings. Her fingernails shimmer gold.

This night is full of confusion.

"Madam Mayor." Emma offers a small nod as she steps into the party. She brushes close enough to Regina to catch a heady rush of Dolce & Gabbana.

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Emma sticks to walls and staircases as the evening fades and the moon takes command. She watches Regina. Because that is what Emma does. She watches people, tries to understand them, tries to predict their next moves. This is how she finds the lost, the forgotten. Regina is almost painfully predictable some days. Others she is the most tangled conundrum Emma has ever met.

Henry's door is just visible from the foyer, closed tight with no light creeping from below the door.

Emma chats with Ruby for a while. Has a drink by the study with Archie. She never loses track of Regina, and after an hour, she starts to watch Regina's glass. The rich liquid lowers level, drains, then refills.

Emma catches the first slight misstep of Regina's silver pumps, at the edge of the rug at the foot of the stairs. A hand on the banister and the moment is smoothed and forgotten. No one else seems to see.

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The diehards of Storybrooke stay later than Emma would have anticipated in this morning-centric town. The last few are saying their goodbyes as the moon sinks behind Regina's apple tree.

Regina is ushering people to the door with all the proper formalities and political courtesies. _Thank you, my dear, and it was lovely to see you. Give my best to your mother._ This Emma expects. She has seen a thousand tactfully placed smiles that fail to touch Regina's eyes and she has only lived in this town for months. What she doesn't expect is Kathryn. This slender, elegant woman wraps her arms around Regina Mills in a warm embrace...and Regina returns the gesture in kind. The mayor's eyes close for a moment, and she pulls Kathryn in closer, drawing a deeper breath in the woman's arms as her hands grip tight. They kiss cheeks as they move apart, fingers entangling, and the kindness in Regina's gaze feels like it must be a trick of the light.

A moment later, Regina turns and catches Emma's eyes, and the familiar sneer serves to erase the aberrant moment from reality.

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Emma is the last one standing in Regina's dining room archway. Because her son is upstairs and his single parent has been drinking steadily since the moon was on the far side of the sky. She just wants to make sure...she has the scope of the situation before she leaves. That is all.

Regina stops at the top of the foyer steps. She stands, a hand resting gracefully on her stomach as her gaze takes measure of the woman in her house. There is a practiced ease, a regalness to Regina's carriage in an evening dress that leaves Emma wondering for a disorienting moment if there is some grain of truth to Henry's delusions. She resists the impulse to shift her weight beneath the older woman's scrutiny. Regina seems to consider the situation for a moment, and just as Emma has begun to suspect she is to be bodily removed from the premises, Regina says simply, "Can I get you another glass of wine?"

"Um...no, I'm good. Have to drive home."

Regina looks as though she wants to say something more, but she falters and only nods. She crosses into the sitting room, to the side table, and reaches for an open bottle of wine. She carries it back to the coffee table along with her own empty glass.

Emma trails behind, pausing beside the guest-rumpled couch.

The lights have been dimmed. At some point in the evening, Regina lit a fair amount of candles and spread them about the living room and parlor.

"I don't often see you in a dress," Regina says, nodding toward Emma's attire.

Emma glances down at her own basic blue, more conservative than her usual style, self-consciously smoothes the knit cloth over her hips and thighs. "Ah. Yeah, well...I was helping Mary-Margaret with the kids' choral show, and she wanted the kids to dress up and she said...we should set a good example. I just...none of my dresses really screamed Kids' School Concert, so I borrowed one of Mary-Margaret's."

Emma awaits the disapproving eyebrow, the snide comment on the quality of her evening wardrobe. Instead, Regina's brow wrinkles with something like sincerity for a disorienting moment, and she says simply, "Oh. Well. It looks nice on you."

The room seems to skid to a halt. _Okay. Regina is definitely drunk._

Regina circles the coffee table and sinks gracefully into the light cushions. She crosses her legs through the slit in her gown and lets the silk cloth pour back along her thigh. "Please," she says, "have a seat."

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"You think...maybe your next one should be a coffee?" Emma offers. She is seated a cushion's width away from Regina, their bodies angled for conversation.

Regina looks confused for a moment, then indignant. As her eyebrow raises, there is an almost comforting flash of the bitchy and defiant mayor Emma has always known, far less confusing than the silk and skin and ruby lips before her. It's disconcerting to describe Regina as beautiful, but denial now would be a lie. "I think I can decide what I wish to drink, in my own house."

"What about Henry?" Emma says, gaze flickering instinctively toward the stairs.

Regina's frown is instant and genuine, almost incredulous. "You think I would drink this much with my son in the house?"

Emma blinks, properly thrown. "He's not upstairs?"

Regina exhales in derision. "Of course not. He left three hours ago. Every year the Storybrooke museum holds an overnight lock-in, a dinosaur hunt for the children. David Nolan is one of the volunteer chaperones this year. He drove Henry over and will be watching him through the night."

Emma falls silent. The story is too easily disproved to be a lie, and she can find no fault. Emma is not sure over ten years' time she could pull off the same.

"Oh," Emma says, trying to keep the genuine air of contrition from her tone. "I didn't know that. My apologies."

Regina merely watches her through narrowed eyes for a long moment, then turns back to filling her glass.

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The candlelight is softening the perpetual frown lines that cross Regina's brow. Or perhaps it's the wine. Her earrings shimmer as she moves and draw flattering attention to the smooth sculpture of the hollow of her cheeks, the shape of her jaw.

Emma forgets sometimes that Regina Mills is simply a woman. A woman who was a girl, once. With parents, a family, birthday parties, and a first crush, a first love. She wants to believe there is a woman she doesn't really know beneath the surface. A woman who raised her son. A woman who will care for him if Emma...should decide to...back away.

Regina is playing with a delicate gold bracelet on her wrist. Her expression is thoughtful, wistful, almost. Barely audible music still wafts from a stereo somewhere in the next room. Emma catches piano, and maybe a bit of violin. She has never thought about what music might reside in Regina's personal collection. What interests she might have shared with Henry.

"Wrists are so sensitive," Regina says, and she lifts her gaze to catch Emma's. Regina's focus is a little fuzzy. She's making sense, and most of her words are clear, but there's a little more effort to every movement, every articulation, and the threads of their exchanges are slightly out of rhythm and wandering.

Emma narrows her eyes. "Yeah..." she replies cautiously. "You mean...to temperature, or..."

Regina shakes her head. Then she closes her eyes for a brief moment when the motion seems to swim the room for her. "No, I just...just my fianc used to...," she gives a soft smile that shocks Emma with a trace of Henry's sparkling eyes and makes no biological sense at all, "he had this way of...drawing his fingers...very lightly, down the inside of my wrist," Regina says. Her fingers mimic the gesture on her own skin as she speaks, and Emma finds it difficult to drag her eyes away. "Whenever I was...freaked out about something, or...scared. He could..." A soft chuckle rises from Regina's chest, the sound throaty and hushed in the cushioned room. She draws a deep breath as she twines her fingers as if to still them. "That was the first time I realized, how physical contact and one's...biological reactions...could be all tangled up with love."

Emma stares for a long moment in the echoes; the word love slides off this woman's tongue as though she might discuss the subject every day, and Regina meets her eyes with an unnerving steadiness and open ease. "You...you had a fianc ?" Emma stammers, her voice thinner and weaker than the ring in her head.

Regina's reply is so slow in coming, Emma fears she has ended the evening. And for the first time Emma finds herself wondering with an uncomfortable pang in her stomach if there is a reason Regina is losing herself in her glass tonight. If there is a reason this creature of ultimate control is giving slack to the reins.

"He was killed," Regina says. "A long time ago."

_Holy shit._ Emma wants to say she's sorry. She's not sure she should be crossing such lines. She had no intention of coming here for a heart-to-heart with Mayor Mills. At least not about...things other than Henry.

"Did you read to him? To Henry? At night?" The words fall from Emma's lips before she can sort them in her mind.

Regina blinks at her, but she catches up. "Of course, I did. Every night until he was old enough to read for himself. And even then."

Emma steels herself, swallows hard. She may be taking advantage of Regina's weakened state, and part of her feels guilty for that, but part of her is seeking a path and is desperate for elusive truths. "You and Henry...before all this...fairytale stuff. Were you...were you a good family?"

"Why? What do you want? "

"I want to make sure my son is okay."

"_My_ son. And he's fine."

"Just tell me, Regina."

Regina's expression is inscrutable, but the usual mayor's mask is merely fleeting. She has retrieved her glass and once again retreats to scrying in its depths. The wine has flushed her cheeks, and her lips are slightly wet. Her tongue slides over lingering lipstick. "I never had a full time nanny," she says. "Someone had to watch Henry once I went back to work, of course, but...I walked Henry up and down all night when he was teething. I taught him to read. I washed all his clothes. He slept in my bed after every nightmare. He clung to my leg on his first day of preschool. I pack every lunch with all his favorite foods, and the ones that are good for him. I know which comics he reads. He and I put up the wallpaper in his bedroom ourselves one summer. We used to have picnic lunches in the park every Thursday all summer long. We learned to fly a kite, one year. And until he was nine years old, he told me all the time...that I was the best Mom in the world."

Emma feels like her chest is shaking. "What happened?"

Regina lifts her chin with an air of something like defiance. Or challenge. She says, "Snow White."

Emma blinks. "What? You mean...the book?"

The silence stretches. Regina shrugs and lowers her head. Her gaze moves restlessly to the dining room arch, to the fireplace, to the soft rug beneath the table. "He got older," she says. "Work got busier. He's independent, strong-willed. I'm strict. We clash. That part was...expected, I suppose."

"But then...things changed...after the book..."

Regina doesn't reply.

"But you love him," Emma says.

"I am not a perfect mother," Regina says. "But no mother is. I love Henry. And I am worlds better than my own mother ever was."

"At least you had a mother to try."

Regina's gaze clings to the flickering candlelight in her wine glass, and as Emma watches this woman's elegant silhouette, she almost regrets her snapping words. She expected sarcasm or derision or resentment. The flash of something akin to visceral pain is something for which she did not come prepared.

In the warm light and the silver gown, with a bit of skin showing and slight softness of focus, Regina Mills is more human than Emma has ever known her to be. There's a twisting gold ring on a chain around her neck - a gift, perhaps, from a parent, or a lover, or a friend. She was someone's betrothed. She is someone with graceful hands and a soft and comforting touch late at night. Someone who was treasured and cared for and loved. She is someone's mother.

It is a moment Emma does not want. And a moment for which she is grateful.

This woman raised her son. Held him, dressed him, taught him...loved him. She does not want this woman to be evil.

It is easier to hate a storybook witch. Harder to hate a woman with soft brown eyes and a wistful smile as her fingernails trace the edges of a lipstick-tainted glass.

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"I should go," Emma says.

Regina nods and pushes to her feet to follow her last guest to the door. She navigates with simple ease, and Emma starts to think Regina is more sober than she guessed. But a step shy of the top of the stairs, Regina utters a soft sound from the back of her throat and closes her eyes, reaches a blind steadying hand toward the wall. Her aim is off, and Emma catches Regina's faltering hand just in time, fingers wrapping around the mayor's wrists.

Regina draws a breath and opens her eyes, her own fingers curling protectively at her stomach. "I'm sorry," she says, a little breathless. There is a genuine hint of embarrassment in her fleeting smile. "A little too much wine, apparently."

Emma brushes off the apology. "It's all right. You okay?"

Regina gives a definitive nod. "Fine."

Emma's hand shifts and her thumb finds its way to rest on the pulse point of Regina's inner wrist. The heart beat is a little rapid, but strong and steady. "Yeah?" she asks, ducking her head a little, seeking eye contact and real confirmation.

Regina's gaze has fixed on the hand cradling her wrist.

Emma follows her eyes and wants to pull away, but Regina still looks a little shaky, and Emma really doesn't want to let go and end up scooping her up from the floor. She compromises and releases Regina's wrist as she settles her other hand in a steadying grip on the mayor's forearm.

Regina draws up straighter, and backlit by the foyer, there is an air of command and...power that shifts the hair on Emma's arms and once again brings images of castles and swords and purple mist and messes with her sense of reality. "I'm quite certain, Miss Swan. You may go."

If there is one thing Regina does well, it is making sure one knows when one is dismissed. Emma sighs, and takes a step back. Regina makes no effort to take the few stair steps, and Emma considers this a wise choice. She sees herself to the door. "Hell of a party you throw, Madam Mayor," she says as she pulls back the door. She has no explanation for the words that fall across her lips even as her feet are safely on the boards of the front porch and she turns back toward the house. "I'm sorry. About your fianc . Nobody should have to go through that."

Regina's expression is distant and inscrutable. Soft and hard and uncertain and unreadable in the backlight of candles and shifting moonlight. She doesn't move. Then Regina takes a step back, turns her head, and for the briefest moment in the flickering light, Emma catches a clear, bright view of pale skin and exposed throat and tears in Regina's eyes. A blink and the moment is gone, and Regina is walking away in controlled and even silence. She crosses to the stairs, takes them swiftly and in rhythm without a single misstep. And Emma is left, standing half in shadow, staring through the still open door, up the golden-lit staircase to the shadows where Regina's retreating figure has vanished in a swirl of silver.

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#


End file.
